Viewing page 79 of 130

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

244

to express the ideas and emotions of his own mind must convey to another a meaning as different as the organization of their respective natures. But when the whole human race is known to compose only one species, this confusion and uncertainty is removed, and the science of human nature, in all its relations, becomes susceptible of system. The principles of morals rest on sure and immutable foundations. --Its unity I have endeavored to confirm by explaining the causes of its variety. Of these, the first I have shewn to be climate, by which is meant, not so much the latitude of a country from the equator, as the degree of heat or cold, which often depends on a great variety of other circumstances. The next is the state of society, which may augment or correct the influence of climate, and is itself a separate and dependent cause of many conspicuous distinctions among mankind. The causes may be infinitely varied in degree; and their effects may likewise be diversified by various combinations. And, in the continual migrations of mankind, these effects may still be further modified, by changes which have antecedently taken place in a prior climate, and a prior state of society. Even where all external circumstances seem to be the same, there may be

245

causes of difference depending on many natural influences with which philosophy is not yet acquainted; as there are varieties among the children of the same family. Frequently we see, in the same country individuals resembling every nation on the globe. Such varieties prove, at least, that the human constitution is susceptible of all the modifications which exist among mankind, without having recourse, in order to account for them, to the unnecessary, and therefore unphilosophical hypothesis of there having existed from the beginning, different original species of men. It is not more astonishing in itself, or out of the order of nature, that nations spring from the same stock, than that individuals should differ. In the one case we are assured of the fact from observation; in the other, we have reason to conclude, independently on the sacred authority of revelation, that from one par have descended all the families of the earth.